


Be quiet

by IronMuffin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Author has no idea what she is doing, Loneliness, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Self-Esteem Issues, Social Anxiety, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Touch-Starved, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-12-22 17:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21080114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronMuffin/pseuds/IronMuffin
Summary: "He was so proud of himself, last few times he had felt devastated after a social interaction that ended up just him blurting stuff about school and his projects or his opinions..He had worked so hard on learning to stay focused, learning to listen and let others talk."The world is not an easy place for Tony to navigate.





	1. Chapter 1

‘Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet…’

For once he was keeping everything inside and already learned something new about one of his classmates during lunch. Just have to endure the silence in between and somebody would talk and it wasn’t him, so everything was good.

The chatter went on around him and every once in a while he would have eye contact with somebody and nod his head and make an affirmative noise that yes, he totally agreed on that subject. 

He was so proud of himself, last few times he had felt devastated after a social interaction that ended up just him blurting stuff about school and his projects or his opinions..He had worked so hard on learning to stay focused, learning to listen and let others talk.

Even if after the day was over and he sat back in front of his computer and felt like he hadn’t even said more than a few full sentences, it still partly felt like a victory. People tolerated him better; he managed to hold eye contact and even maybe received a few smiles. 

The best moment had been when a classmate bumped his hand a little on his shoulder after he had made a small teasing comment that finally was interpreted right and the girl had laughed with him and touched him. 

It was the most human contact he had in weeks (months? he was pretty sure it was only weeks since somebody brushed his leg when doing some group work in class) and it burned in his mind and he would remember it for days afterwards. The stamp of a disgusting human being hurt less after that and even made the small thought of ‘maybe I am not the worst’ spark again inside his chest.

It was Friday and the weekend was looming. He could still remember the time when his anxiety kicked up a notch when a weekend came and he knew he would just spend it inside alone. Now it didn’t matter that much, he was fine in his home and with his computer. There were some exams coming up and he could use the weekend for that.

And with the week ending up on a good note was maybe cheering him up a bit. Or at least it wasn’t taking him down like what happened on those days when he didn’t manage himself in the outside world and when he felt that he had made a total fool of himself when trying to pretend that he had social skills.

Those were bad days. They usually ended up with him clutching his stuffed toy when going to bed and trying to muffle the sobs so that the neighbors wouldn’t hear him that often. You should never think about bad things (your life) when it’s time to go to bed and your mind and body are tired.

But now it was just afternoon, weekend ahead of him and stuff to do. 

‘Might as well start’, he thought. He could work for a few hours and then have some dinner. Maybe have some fun in the evening and play online, even if it made him a bit ashamed of himself when wasting time on such useless thing.


	2. Don't dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'The lingering feelings of the dream that finally woke him up felt like they were tearing his heart apart.
> 
> He just wanted to stop existing. It hurt, everything hurt.'

He woke up with his heart beating fast in his chest. The feeling of wrongness was heavy on his mind, he felt scared and alone. The lingering feelings of the dream that finally woke him up felt like they were tearing his heart apart.

He just wanted to stop existing. It hurt, everything hurt.

Flashes of the dreams were on him. It felt like he had dreamed for a long time but he could never be sure once he woke up. Sometimes he thought that he had dreamed the whole night, but when checking the time, he could see that he had been asleep only for a couple of hours. How was it even possible to dream in such a short time after falling asleep? Weren’t there dream phases to go through before that? 

Now the dreams had been plagued with loneliness. Other people saying it to his face how disgusting he was, how out of place. How nobody liked him. It had hurt so bad. In the dream, he had gone to complain about it politely, that you could not treat people that way. But the person he had been trying to tell it seemed uninterested, like it didn’t matter. Even when in the dream they should have cared, it had happened under their surveillance (his dreams were weird, he wasn’t sure where he had been but he knew that they should have cared and they didn’t).

It was a mirror image of his life. Even when he tried to be extra polite,be kind..he only got aggression or ignorance back. He didn’t understand why. He didn’t know how to fix it, how others might have gotten an apology and all he got was angry words and looks.

And now, tears welling up in his eyes and few shaky sobs escaping his mouth, he just wanted it to all end. It was all too much and he was tired. So tired. He was forced to live his life, even if he had never asked for it.

The worst moment would pass, he just had to hold on for a second so the feelings the dream evoked were more dulled. They were agonizing moments, some of the most painful ones that he wished he could learn to avoid. But every few weeks, sometimes multiple times if it was bad week, they would come. They always came.

And he just wished somebody would say it would be okay. For five minutes, somebody would say it would be okay. He would do anything to get that.

But he was alone and he would be alone in the future as well. 

Wiping the few stray tears from his cheeks, he tried to gather himself. This time he had the energy to get up, even if it only was around 5 am and he maybe slept only for 5 hours. But getting up would help diminish the dreamscape faster.

‘New day, new ways to fail’ he thought. This day he would be too shaky to get out of the apartment and the relief that flooded his body of giving in and giving himself the permission to stay inside was almost like a small moment of peace on his disarrayed mind. Maybe today he got some important stuff done, but first he would just take it easy and try to get some food down to his stomach.

And hopefully the next night would be dreamless (it never was).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dreams can sometimes be worse than the reality you live in. In dreams, sometimes you can't escape.
> 
> Poor Tony. This chapter didn't bring us forward that much, but it might give an insight on how troubled Tony is and how little he has left to function on a daily basis.


	3. Don't cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The times when things seemed to go better were almost the worst."

The times when things seemed to go better were almost the worst.

That is how he ended up kneeling near the bathroom door on a late Friday afternoon, curling in on himself and just letting the tears, snot and drool fall down freely as sobs wrecked his body.

He thought he had been doing so well and maybe possibly getting closer to actually calling some people his friends (well not friends but maybe at least close acquaintances). 

But once again he miscalculated and it had all been in his head and not real. The reality had slapped him in the face when he had been leaving the uni that day, just walking and thinking how well the week had gone. He had noticed a group walking closely infront of him, three of the people he had spend a bit more time now, smiling and even making some jokes. Some of them sat with him in lecture too.

They had been deep in conversation but quickly noticed that he had been catching up to them and turned to say a quick hello. Tony had felt the small excitement bubble in his chest, they would have time to exchange a few words and smiles and wish each other a good weekend. 

But after the quick hello, the threesome had immediately turned back to their conversation and Tony tried to hide the disappointment. Keeping a neutral face was important. He concentrated on the pedestrian redlights that just came on, stopping all of them in the same place.

What really hurt was when he realized that the group was discussing what each of them would be bringing tonight, maybe something about cooking together and spending the evening together. Tony tried not to eavesdrop, but it was impossible, they were standing so close by, with their backs mostly turned towards Tony, enclosing him even more from the conversation.

He had gotten it all wrong. He thought that he had been getting closer to these people, close enough that he would have really wanted to spend some time with them outside of school world. But the longer he kept listening to others arranging a get-together with classmates that even he knew, he more he could feel the hole inside his chest grow.

How could he have been so stupid.

The light turned green and all of them started moving again, crossing the road. He didn’t dare even look the anywhere but forward. The discussion was still going on and he just didn’t want to hear another word anymore. The only thing helping was that this route took him left when the others continued on. He swiftly made his way a bit further and only then let the sadness envelope and extinguish the spark he had faultily managed to create that week. 

There weren’t that many people on his short journey home and he managed to hold the tears in until he had the key in his door lock. It was always more difficult to hit the key hole when his vision was blurring from wetness.

And that is how he ended up on the floor. There was a small puddle in front of him, but he just didn’t care, none of it mattered. And why the better times were the worst? Because the drop back down felt devastating. It was another failure, another time when he had tried. Made a change, tried a new outlook and a new way to present himself and once again it had failed. Tried to achieve a connection, but never succeeded.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent on the floor. The open sobs were the only thing that lessened the tightness in his chest. Years ago, he only wept silently, but something had changed there as well and now he just could not stop them. It was like there was a huge dam inside him and whenever there was anything put behind it, it immediately overflowed and the sobs were ripped out of him. 

The sobs did end and eventually the outside turned dark as evening came. This time the numbness came to help him, his body too tired and wrung out to keep the anxiety and fear on top anymore. 

He was supposed to cook dinner for himself that day, but now it just felt like a fence too high for him to climb. He managed to make two pieces of toast that got a bit wet when the tears started flowing in the middle of chewing them (what do you know, he actually could cry silently again. didn’t understand how or why). That and a glass of water were the things that he accounted to be enough to help him get through the night, he made his way to the safe cocoon of his bed. Well, usually safe if you didn’t count the nightmares.

What he hadn’t realized, was that those few minutes at the red lights were enough to derail the whole weekend. He had a project deadline on Monday and this time, he could not pull himself together to finish it. He hated it, hated that he spent the weekend numb, crying for hours and not knowing how to make it stop. He thought he was over that, he had been doing so well.

When Monday came, he just wished that anybody who saw his dark circles, the slump in this posture and the wet sheen sometimes rising in his eyes, would just think that he had partied a little too much that weekend. On that day, for once, he was grateful that nobody talked to him.


	4. Be alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small interlude on what has happened before. Hopefully next chapter will continue the story forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suicidal plans and thoughts, don't read if triggered by them.

He had planned his own funeral

He didn’t want a graveside. All he wished was a forest where his ashes would be spread.  
Then he there would be nothing of him in the world left, like he never existed and like he never affected anything by his existence. Just dust gone in the wind, his molecules only a spec in the universe and part of the natural circle of matter in space.

There would be no funeral, there would be nobody to mourn him. It would be as if he had never been there at all.  
Just a void.

He had done this the first time that his mother had declined his visit. 

His mother had always been the only and only person who he could turn to. They weren’t close, they didn’t share feelings but his presence had been accepted with her. He knew he had been using her, spilling words out of his mouth without a floodgate and it had helped him. He never got much answers back but for some strange reason, after those visits he felt like his insides were a bit more organized. There would be small moments where he felt ‘normal’, almost like a memory resurfacing as a feeling and his thoughts were aligned and in order.

It was a week where he had felt like he really needed to see her. Just to have some human contact, even if it was his usually absent workaholic father or his emotionally stunted mother. He had asked if it was okay to come visit by text, spend some time at with them at the cottage where they were supposed to be travelling next weekend. He knew he hadn’t been up to the normal social code on his last visits, anxious and angry, talking too much so his brain would stop filling with words that nobody ever got to hear.

And she declined. She said that they were a bit busy, her and his father and the weather was supposed to be rainy. She said that they would have a better time sometime later.

It was the first time this happened. His mother must know that he had some issues in his life, maybe a hint that he did spend a lot of his time alone. He wasn’t able to rise to his full potential and his father and all but abandoned the idea of him ever being anything a few years ago.

He’s not sure what happened after he had received her text. He send her a message saying ‘okay’. Sat by the table for a few hours and kept wondering why there were no tears when he felt like he was supposed to have a hole in his chest.

He was not sure if the numbness was better or worse than sobbing his heart out. There should have been more of a physical something that he felt like the situation was missing. His body just kept on going and there was a barrier in his mind from stopping his brain from realizing what just happened. It should have fried everything inside him, he should bleed blood and fire and suffocate with it.

She had been the only reason why he fought to see another day. And now even she could not stand him.

That was also the day when he decided that he needed to get a fire arm. 

It would be his backup, his last salvation and his release. It would stop him from hurting. There had to be something to stop it all.

Now that he looks back on it, he doesn’t remember the days after that evening. All the specifics are gone from his head and there is just a recollection of stopping. Like he stopped existing for a while and only the body moved, forced food down his throat and took him to the bathroom. He thinks he might have slept a lot because there were no reasons to be awake. 

Now, there is a gun on the back of his closet, on the top self so he can’t reach it without a chair. Getting a chair will give him the few extra seconds to slow down if the need to hold the cold metal in his hands comes overbearing. It has worked so far.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something I felt like writing. Probably will continue just spewing out stuff like this and hoping to get to that happy ending. Any kudos is muchly appreciated if you liked it, I hope some people can relate to this Tony.


End file.
